Invasion of Zimbabwe and Western Hypocrisy

Ethiopia and Kenya are well known for supporting the US war against terrorism and have offered their countries as launch pads for these wars. People are maimed and killed, but despite police and security force brutality there is hardly a whimper of the magnitude of the thunderous noise heard about Zimbabwe.

No to invasion of Zimbabwe!

By Victor Moeleso Moatihadi Molefe

The Socialist Party of Azania is noting with great concern the recent developments in the region most particularly concerning Zimbabwe. While we are also concerned about the situation, however, we note that despite the many hardships, the country still remain in tact with most of its functions in place and also with great wealth from platinum, the recently discovered oil, uranium and other minerals. The calls therefore, for military intervention from most particularly Britain and the US is extremely worrisome to us. Western imperialism would have us believe that they have great concern about the democracy project but existing and available evidence tells us the contrary. America has gone on record as saying ‘We have no friends but interests,’ then the question that begs an answer concerning Zimbabwe is since the country of Zimbabwe is not their friend, what then is their interest in Zimbabwe. African countries and leaders should not agree to be coerced into schemes designed to, at end destroy Africa and its people.

We say for NO TO MILITARY INTERVENTION IN ZIMBABWE, WE SAY NO TO ANY IMPERIALIST AND FOREIGN AGGRESSION IN ZIMBABWE: Military intervention has not assisted any country anywhere in the world, except to bring untold suffering to those countries that have been invaded. Yesterday it was Somalia which was completely dislocated and destroyed, Iraq is literally destroyed, Sudan is a deathly crisis and Zimbabwe will definitely be destroyed should military intervention become a reality. REMEMBER, tomorrow it will definitely be South Africa.

Against a military intervention headed by American and British imperialist and NATO, we are on the side of the Zimbabwean people and of Mugabe. We henceforth call on all the workers and their organizations, our people, the youth and all organizations to support this call for a campaign against the intended occupation of Zimbabwe and we will work with anyone who is trying to work to defend the land, the people, the sovereignty of Zimbabwe, peace and stability. We urge all workers in their organizations, peoples, locally and internationally to endorse.

Many African leaders are as guilty as Mugabe, but they pander to imperialismBy Lybon Mabasa

The elections in Zimbabwe have become the key and the most important story in the world media. The world is being convinced that democracy in Zimbabwe is only possible if Robert Mugabe is defeated tomorrow. The people are completely disregarded and their democratic rights are completely undermined by forces claiming to be on their side. Isn’t democracy the right of people to make free choices? In Zimbabwe, despite positive and clear messages from many credible quarters who are in that country to monitor the elections, the media continues to churn out only one message: that the elections will only be credible if the opposition wins. If it’s that simple, then there’s no way that Zimbabweans and Mugabe can emerge winners. Mugabe’s sin is not that he is a dictator because those Western countries that want to see him removed are themselves responsible for installing many dictators in many countries. In Africa they are known to have special relationships with murderous dictators and regimes that kill and maim members of opposition parties, detain them without trials and make them vanish without trace, as in Ethiopia. Yet nothing negative is ever printed or said about them.

During elections, hundreds, even thousands of people are killed yet diplomatic relations are never severed. These Western powers are the first to plead that these regimes be given a chance to find solutions. Many of the dictators and regimes are totally subordinate to Western imperialism, led by the US and the UK. Ethiopia and Kenya are well known for supporting the US war against terrorism and have offered their countries as launch pads for these wars. People are maimed and killed, but despite police and security force brutality there is hardly a whimper of the magnitude of the thunderous noise heard about Zimbabwe. Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni has been in power for so many years, but he is not called a dictator because he allows US military bases in his country where credible opposition is put down. The war against Zimbabweans and Mugabe is not about democracy, but about subordination to imperialism. Sane and moderately intelligent persons know that the disastrous economic situation in Zimbabwe is deliberately implemented to force a regime change and stem the positive agrarian reform that has called the bluff of various British administrations that have failed to fulfill their Lancaster House commitments. It will be irresponsible to deny the extent of the culpability of the Zimbabwean government by having allowed international financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank to implode the economy as they have done in so many developing countries that held so much promise. But the largest measure of the blame was deliberately orchestrated and sustained by imperialism in much the same way as they have done in Cuba, Venezuela, and many other countries, with less success. Parties that even slightly resist imperialism find themselves facing total destruction because imperialism will not tolerate a united people and their fighting organisations. This phenomena has played itself out in many parties and organisations in many parts of the world such as the Workers Party in Brazil, the ANC here and is presently playing itself out in Zimbabwe. What opposition leaders are offering does not seem to be far removed from the grand designs of imperialism. The idea is to reverse or offer to reverse the gains won through struggle by the people and workers. Leaders and key people in political parties and organisations are lured to break rank with parties with dubious interests that seek to destroy or weaken peoples’ struggles by promises of great political influence and money. Mushrooming opposition leaders oppose political programmes that have served the interests of their people well. They deliberately embrace neo-liberal and rampantly market-oriented policies, often sponsored by international finance institutions of the IMF and World Bank ilk. The new leaders are supported and feted by the very people, countries and institutions that have for many years brought untold suffering to millions. These institutions, people and countries do not turn over a new leaf by supporting the new opposition leaders. On the contrary, as they have done throughout history, they draw their new recruits from disciplined and fighting labour movements and political parties. Thus it is not difficult to understand the phenomenon that is Morgan Tsvangirai and Simba Makoni. Displaying political amnesia, they are totally silent on the real culprits for the Zimbabwean economic disaster and have turned a blind eye to the ploys of imperialism in that country. They do not mention for instance the fact that since 2001, the US government has passed several laws solely to destroy Zimbabwe’s economy. These laws are euphemistically referred to as laws aimed at promoting democracy, but closer scrutiny shows that they are aimed at subordinating Zimbabwe. These laws were vigorously opposed by black US congressmen who said that the laws had nothing to do with democracy, but everything with recolonising Zimbabwe. These countries show a complete disregard and disrespect for democracy. They invade stable, sovereign states and kill their leaders like they did in Iraq, they steal votes in non-monitored elections and then have the audacity to prescribe a different kind of democracy for others. They are guilty of crimes against humanity in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe, for all his faults past and present, is trying to defend his country’s sovereignty. The Socialist Party of Azania has no choice but to support Mugabe.

Launching the Pedagogical History of Africa Project in Harare yesterday [5 September 2011] , President Mugabe said . . . “The history that must be written by our African scholars and academics here is the history that focuses on African people in struggle as creators of their own destiny rather than mere consumers of stories written about them by passive on-lookers who oftentimes happen to be non-African outsiders . . . . Real history belongs to a people in struggle and not to the interpreters of history. The people themselves are the makers of history and therefore the real historians. The interpreters are mere raconteurs of history and not the actual history-makers as is often wrongly implied . . . Only this way can we avoid history written by colonialists as ‘winners’. Our real winners are the people, whose real history or struggle the so-called winners would like to distort and suppress . . . You cannot be a historian of African people if you do not share their cry or their laughter. No. The African sensibility, reflected in African culture and worldview, is the only accurate compass to guide a historian who is genuine about writing African history. . . . Slavery and colonisation do not themselves constitute African history. They disrupt and falsify the trajectory of African history. They dehumanise Africans to fit into the scheme of European capital. The ideology of racism is created as a parallel process to rationalise the oppression of Africans. . . . I need not stress that it is imperative to edify educational systems, which embody the African and universal values so as to ensure the rooting of youth in African culture in the context of a sustainable and participatory development. This way we continue to foster the spirit of unity in Africa as embodied in the African Unity CharterAllAfrica

Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a collection of fourteen essays by scholars and creative writers from Africa and the Americas. Called one of two significant critical works on Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late 1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of Carter G. Woodson and Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an historical context for understanding 20th-century creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone writers, such as Cuban Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist, and scholar Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the significance of Negritude in Latin America. This collaborative text set the tone for later conferences in which writers and scholars worked together to promote, disseminate, and critique the literature of Spanish-speaking people of African descent. . . . Cited by a literary critic in 2004 as “the seminal study in the field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which most scholars in the field ‘cut their teeth’.”